Time After Time Lord
by penna.nomen
Summary: Suppose at the end of Supernatural episode Time After Time (S7E12), Dean was stuck in the past instead of making it back to the present. And suppose the Tenth Doctor showed up… Based on a request to offset Dean's angst with the Doctor's whimsy. Fluff, humor, Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy references, Calvin & Hobbes references, time travel


_A/N:_ _Alternate ending for Supernatural episode Time After Time (S7E12). From the Doctor's perspective, it's right after the 50th Anniversary episode (The Day of the Doctor). Spoilers for both of those episodes, and for Supernatural episodes In My Time of Dying (S2E01) and In the Beginning (S4E03). Slightly AU, of course. Inspired by an AO3 Chocolate Box challenge prompt._

 **Canton, Ohio. 1944.**

The good news was that they'd stopped Chronos. He'd been zapped back to the present along with the olive stake that could destroy him. Through the brief fissure in time, Dean Winchester saw his brother Sam stab Chronos with the stake. One more monster bit the dust, thanks to the Winchesters.

The bad news was that Chronos had tossed Dean away with supernatural strength, far enough that the window between 1944 and 2012 closed before Dean could reach it.

"Now what?" Eliot Ness asked. Yes, _the_ Eliot Ness.

Dean shrugged. The plan had been to hitch a ride back through time with Chronos. There weren't a lot of other options. He'd traveled to the past before, but Castiel wasn't around to return him home this time. "I think I'm stuck here."

Ness got him a hotel room and said something about putting him to work tomorrow.

The legendary FBI agent had also recognized that a night like this called for drowning your sorrows, and left Dean with a bottle of Scotch.

Dean was nearly halfway through the bottle now. He'd started out bemoaning the fact that he was stuck in the 1940s. No pizza delivery. That hurt. No Baby. His beloved car wouldn't even be manufactured for another 23 years. And he'd been sent too far back in time to attend any concerts by his favorite rock groups. All the best music was from the 1970s and 1980s. By then he'd be an old man.

That just sucked.

Fortunately Ness knew about monsters and the need to hunt them. He'd mentioned dealing with an infestation of vampires, so he knew what he was talking about. It felt weird though, thinking about hunting without his brother. They'd called it the family business.

 _Family_.

He pushed aside his glass and grabbed a sheet of paper to start outlining a plan. When he'd gone back in time to 1973, he learned his grandfather was a hunter, too. How old would Samuel Campbell be in 1944?

What if Dean could find Samuel and start working with him now? Could he change the future?

He'd tried before and failed, but he'd only had a few days in 1973 with no warning that he'd be making the trip. He hadn't had a chance to prepare. But now he had nearly 30 years until the yellow-eyed demon approached his mother with the deal that would lead to her death. If he befriended the family now, there would be plenty of time to influence Mary Campbell and keep her away from that demon.

It crossed his mind that if he changed his parents' lives – saving his mom's life and therefore stopping his dad from becoming a hunter – then Sam and Dean probably wouldn't have been in Canton hunting Chronos in 2012. Dean wouldn't have been pulled back into 1944 to kick off these changes to his own past. If Sam were here he'd probably warn that this scenario was a paradox they should try to avoid. But what's the worst that could happen?

In fact if the stories he'd heard as a kid had been true, causing a paradox might be his best move.

 **The TARDIS.**

The Doctor leaned against the TARDIS console as the time machine dematerialized.

He'd stopped the Zygons from invading Earth during the Elizabethan era and certainly felt proud of that. He hadn't expected the queen to fall in love with him in the process, but a little romantic romp was good for the heart now and then.

Things had taken a bit of comedic turn when that fellow with the fez had gone on about whether he'd been snogging the real Elizabeth or her Zygon duplicate.

The fez. There was something about the fez, and the man wearing it… A stranger, and yet not… He'd seemed as familiar with time travel as a fellow Time Lord would have been, but that wasn't possible. All of the other Time Lords had perished in the Time War.

"Wait," he said, glancing at the console. According to the instruments he was leaving England, but from the year 2013. Hadn't he just been in the sixteenth century?

"Why don't I remember?" he asked.

For a moment he had a flash of a memory from the twenty-first century. He'd been looking at the painting "Gallifrey Falls" with… Who had he been with? "Why don't I remember?" he asked again.

A trace of Rose's voice echoed in his mind. _Impossible_ , he told himself.

He reached for the controls, determined to return to wherever he'd just been. He needed to sort this out.

The TARDIS lurched, and he held onto the console to keep from sliding across the room. The whooshing sound indicated that the time machine was materializing again. He hadn't entered a destination, but sometimes it happened that way, the time machine taking him to a place where it thought he needed to be.

Now it seemed he was needed in the United States in 1944.

"You win," he told the TARDIS. "But don't think I'll forget. As soon as I'm done here, it's back to London."

 **Canton, Ohio. Hotel room.**

Changing into the clothes he'd worn when he'd left 2012 made Dean a little more comfortable. The 1940s suit had been fun at first, but it was a costume. He was playing a part in it, just like when he wore a suit in his own time.

He was struggling to get the suit jacket onto a hanger when he heard a grinding, whooshing noise. A blue box appeared out of nowhere, barely fitting in the cramped hotel room.

Huh. For all his hopes, he hadn't really believed his gamble would pay off. And yet here it was, the magical box from the stories he'd heard as a kid. After everything that had gone wrong in his life recently, maybe his luck was finally turning.

Still afraid it was good to be true, he went with the instincts he'd honed as an adult and drew his gun. Dean wasn't taking any chances. He'd outgrown blind faith a long time ago.

A door in the box opened, and a dark-haired man stepped out. He wore a brown pinstripe suit and white sneakers.

The stories Dean remembered were about a man with a floppy hat and a scarf that went on for yards, but a difference in wardrobe was the least of his concerns. "Who are you?" he asked, making sure his voice hid all traces of the awe he felt facing one of his childhood heroes.

The trouble with childhood heroes was that eventually you grew up and realized they were as flawed as everyone else.

The man pulled an ID holder out of a pocket, saying, "Otherwise known as the Doctor," as he flipped open the holder. The Doctor glanced at it and raised a brow. Instead of an ID there was a piece of paper which had the words "The Doctor" in a childlike scrawl. Putting it away he said, "Psychic paper. It shows you something you'll accept. It seems my reputation has preceded me. Or have we met?"

Dean lowered the gun. "I'm Dean Winchester. Bobby Singer told me stories about you when I was a kid. When he realized I didn't believe in Santa Claus, he said I needed something else good to believe in."

"Oh well, _good_ , that's a matter of opinion, isn't it?" The Doctor wandered around the room muttering, "Bobby Singer. Bobby Singer." He'd reached the desk and suddenly turned around to face Dean again. "Bobby Singer! He was traveling the world, doing research. Well, he called it research. Well, it was research, but the goal wasn't so much learning as it was to escape. Collecting books and trying not to dwell on the death of his wife. I ran into him in Scotland, actually. We swapped stories over a few pints and went looking for Nessie."

"Nessie?" Dean repeated. "As in the Loch Ness monster?"

"Mmm. Yes. Didn't find her that time. I think she was sulking, honestly. Now tell me, why do you have a cell phone from 60 years in the future?"

"I brought it with me. I was trying to stop Chronos, and as I grabbed him he jumped back in time. Now I'm stuck here and trying to make the best of things." He gestured toward his notes on the desk. "Thought I might help my family make less of a mess of our lives."

"Changing your own past. That sounds simpler than it is. Have you considered that if you make drastic changes, you might not be born at all?"

Dean crossed his arms. "Yeah. So?"

"If you aren't born, then you couldn't be here to make those changes, meaning they didn't happen, so you are born and come back to make those changes… It's a paradox. A particularly nasty one."

"Or a distress call from a stranded time traveler," Dean said.

The Doctor nodded approvingly, "No wonder the TARDIS brought me here. Your blunt force approach to the delicate balance of – well, let's call it the _wibbly-wobbly timey-wimey chain of causality_ for the sake of argument – it practically dares a Time Lord to investigate." He grinned. "And here I am. The answer seems straightforward enough. I return you to your proper timeline, and you can't wreak havoc in this one."

Dean started to relax, but had to ask, "Can you really get me home? Back to my time?"

"The TARDIS can take you where you belong, but I have to warn you that it isn't always a direct route. Care to give it a try?"

"I'm in," said Dean. He pocketed his phone and crumpled up the notes on the desk, throwing them in the trash. Then he looked around the room. It was tempting to take the suit, but he grabbed only the fedora. "Is it okay to bring back a souvenir?"

"Good choice. Now, _allons-y_!" He opened the door to the TARDIS and waved Dean inside. The Doctor closed the door behind them and then watched expectantly as Dean studied the space.

"Bobby mentioned it was bigger on the inside, but I didn't realize how much bigger." He realized he was smiling. "Did he try to take that console apart to see how it worked?"

"Yes, and she doesn't like being pawed at by strangers. The shock she gave him threw him halfway to the door." He patted the console. "There, there, old girl. Don't fret. Dean will admire you from afar."

Now Dean chuckled. "I recognize that look in your eyes. It's the same one I see if I look in the rearview mirror when I'm driving Baby. People say she's just a car, just a machine, but that's because they don't get it. I've put so much blood, sweat and tears into her, after all these years I'd swear she has a soul."

"The things you put your heart into cease to be merely things," the Doctor said as he walked around the console, turning dials and pushing knobs. "What you need, Dean Winchester, is a vacation. Let's see. Someplace sunny, I think."

"What? No! I have to go home and make sure Sammy's okay. It looked like he ganked Chronos, but I can't take any chances." A fear he'd been repressing made its way forward. "For all we know, that creature tossed my brother back or forward in time while they were struggling. He might need our help."

"And he'll get it," the Doctor promised. "We have a time machine, remember. You can have the vacation you need and then we'll pop back at the precise moment your brother needs us. Now let's see." He was looking at a monitor which displayed a list. "No. No. Not that one, either." The list grew shorter by two. "I said not that one." The list didn't change. One line grew brighter. "Traal? Really?"

"Traal?" Dean repeated with a frown. "This is going to sound really strange."

"You're in a time machine disguised as a police box from the 1960s with the man who taught Alice to believe six impossible things before breakfast. Strange is normal."

"It's just that the name _Traal_ is familiar for some reason." He shrugged. "I don't know why."

"A mystery. Very well. Traal it is."

 **A beach on the** **planet Traal.**

As a vacation spot, Traal was a bust in Dean's opinion. It was night when they arrived, and the sky, ocean and sand were all gray. In the dim light, even he and the Doctor looked as if they were starring in a black-and-white movie.

The Doctor led the way to a spot overlooking the water. Once they were seated on the towels he'd brought he said, "Now you have to tell a story."

"I don't know a lot of stories," Dean objected. "When I was a kid, Dad told us horror stories, at least that's what we thought, but they were really lessons on how to kill monsters. And most of what I read now…" Most of his adult reading was _adult_ reading, as in porn.

"Not stories from books. It needs to be from your own life. Start with Baby," the Doctor suggested.

Dean leaned back on the towel until he was looking up at the dark sky and let memories flood him. He didn't plan out the story, but simply started talking. He described how he'd gone back in time and convinced his father to buy the 1967 Chevy Impala. Then he talked about squabbles with his brother in the backseat, and learning to drive when he was fourteen and his father had been too badly injured on a hunt to drive himself to the emergency room. He stopped after sharing how he'd rebuilt the car following the accident that had preceded his father's death. He'd worked through a lot of grief, anger and guilt on that project, and even talking about it left him feeling drained. He wasn't sure how much time had passed when he opened his eyes, but now the sky and water had taken on a green tint, and the sand looked more yellow than gray. Rocks he hadn't noticed before seemed to be glowing a light blue color.

Almost as soon as Dean stopped talking, the Doctor told a story about outwitting creatures called Daleks and Cybermen, and how he'd needed a break afterward. That led to the tale of how he'd met Bobby.

"You're a hunter, too," Dean said when the Doctor finished describing an adventure with Bobby. "You stop monsters."

"I try to. The thing to remember about being in the role of saving people from monsters is that after a while you start to see monsters everywhere. You have to remember this: not everything that's different from you or that you don't understand is evil. People with dark sides can have good in them, too, but you can get stuck in the habit of only looking for the dark. If you always expect evil, you stop noticing the good."

"That's what Bobby was trying to tell me in his stories about you," Dean remembered. He thought back to the ID the Doctor had shown him, with _The Doctor_ written in a child's handwriting. That had been his own handwriting, he realized. His dad had carried a book filled with stories and pictures featuring monsters, and Bobby had given Dean a notebook to fill with stories and pictures of good things. Dean had drawn a blue box and written _The Doctor_ on the page, and at Bobby's prompting had added a few more entries. But a few days later his father noticed and threw that notebook away. For years after that, John had kept his sons away from Bobby.

"Do you see them?" the Doctor asked in a low voice.

Dean looked around, finally noticing that the landscape was fully lit. The rocks and even small pebbles were a neon blue now. They glowed so brightly it hurt to look directly at them, but he could see them moving. Squinting and shading his eyes against the glow, he watched alien creatures gather up the rocks and carry them away.

"Those rocks are their primary source of energy. The depleted ones are returned to the beach to be recharged by visitors like us."

"Through stories?" Dean asked.

"Yes. Personal stories, in particular. The stones collect a psychic charge specific to the emotions we express in our stories. It works best when there's a storyteller and a listener, both freely transmitting their emotions."

The landscape grew dim again as the charged rocks were removed and dark ones were brought to the beach in their place.

"Tell me," said the Doctor. "When you first saw the Bugblatters, did you have the urge to reach for a weapon?"

Somewhat to his surprise, Dean said, "No." Before the Doctor could respond, Dean asked, "Did you say _Bugblatters_? As in the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal?"

"They're only called _beasts_ in the context of their football team. Well, not football in the American sense. Well, not football as in what you'd call soccer, either. In fact, _not-football_ might be a more accurate term. The Bugblatter Beasts have won the galactic not-football tournament three times in the last century. It's a source of great civic pride. How did you hear of them?"

"It's from a book Bobby gave me when I was a teenager. _The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy_ , by Douglas Adams." At the Doctor's encouragement, Dean told what he could recall of the adventures of Ford Prefect and Arthur Dent, including references to Vogon constructor fleets and towels and a paranoid android.

The Doctor laughed through the stories. It sounded rusty at first, as if he hadn't laughed in a while and wasn't sure if he should now, but after a brief hesitation he let loose and simply roared with laughter. The dark rocks began to glow as his mirth increased. Finally he slowed to chuckles and wiped his eyes. "Good old Dougie. He wandered into the TARDIS once when I'd stopped in the middle of nowhere to get my bearings. His car broke down on the way home from a party and was looking for help. I brought him here, and we sat on towels as I told stories about a girl named Susan Ford who convinced me to take on some hitchhikers long ago. Vogons, now those bring back memories. Haven't seen them in ages. I wonder what happened to them. Perhaps I'll find out, once you're sorted. All right then." He leapt to his feet. "Where to next? With all of time and space accessible to you, what do you want to do before you go home?"

Dean stretched lazily. Without the visual clues of a sun rising and setting, he had no idea how much time had passed, but he knew he'd been lying around long enough. "What's this not-football game like?"

 **The TARDIS.**

Dean limped over to what looked like an old car bench-style seat and collapsed on it, still laughing. He couldn't remember when he'd laughed so much, but the game had been pure fun. The only thing he could compare it to was Calvinball from the Calvin and Hobbes cartoons. Come to think of it, those Bugblatters kinda looked like stuffed animals. Had the Doctor brought Bill Watterson here, too?

The Bugblatters were barely a third of Dean's height, but that wasn't necessarily a disadvantage. They'd run between his legs, and sometimes would curl up around the ball and roll down the hills of the field where they'd played. When they did that, the only way to get them to give up the ball was to tickle them.

The Doctor was laughing, too.

"I thought you'd be out of breath," Dean said. "You're in better shape than I guessed."

"There's a lot of running involved in being a Time Lord. First there's running from things while I figure out who they are and what they want. Then there's running after things once I know what I need to do. Usually it seems to be in corridors rather than open fields, though. This was a refreshing change."

The choice of running shoes with the suit was making more sense. "You're a lean, mean, running machine."

"Impressive job getting free of the Singing Zone. Usually you have to sing for five minutes before you can leave, but you were so awful they freed you in less than one."

Dean snorted. "When I was a kid I had a decent voice, but it was more fun singing off key to annoy Sammy. I've perfected it now." He shook his head. "I'd nearly forgotten, but when I was fifteen I wanted to be a rock star. For a while there I actually thought I could stop being a hunter. I learned soon enough that wasn't in the cards. That's probably why I resented Sam so much for leaving us to go to college."

"Because he got away when you couldn't?" the Doctor asked.

"Yeah there was some of that, but mostly it was because I knew it couldn't last. And the longer he stayed away, the worse it was going to be when he had to admit it. So I resented him for not learning from my mistakes, and he resented me for being right."

"Which band?" the Doctor asked.

"Huh?"

"If you could have joined any band, which one would it be?"

Dean scoffed. "Led Zeppelin, but it's not like I ever had a snowball's chance in hell of making that happen. Their heyday was before I was even born."

The Doctor grinned. "Good thing I have a time machine then, isn't it?" He pressed a knob and the familiar grinding, wheezing noise started.

 **Canton, Ohio. 2012.**

As soon as the TARDIS doors opened, Dean sprinted outside. He ran into the house where he'd seen Sam and Jody before the window between 1944 and 2012 closed. He skidded to a stop, looking around to confirm that they were both safe and sound. "Chronos?" he asked.

"Destroyed," Sam said. "How'd you get here? When he tossed you away before returning to this time, I thought we'd never see you again."

"Long story," Dean said.

"Sounds like something to share over a few beers," Jody said. "C'mon. I'm buying."

Soon they were sitting in a booth at the back of a bar, beers in hand. "Tell us already," Sam insisted. "What happened?"

"Where'd the hat come from?" Jody added, tipping her beer toward the fedora Dean was wearing.

"Let me tell you about how I met Eliot Ness," Dean said. Maybe it was the result of his time energizing the stones on Traal, but he found it easy to spin the events of 1944 into something that mesmerized his audience. He ended with the arrival of the Doctor and what the TARDIS looked like, implying that they'd come directly back to the present.

Sam and Jody looked at each other.

"That's it?" Sam asked.

"Whaddya mean?" Dean asked. He held his beer bottle up, motioning to the waitress that he wanted another.

"It's just that I couldn't help noticing the smell," Jody said.

"Weed," Sam added. "Not all that prominent in 1944, was it?"

"Ah. It's not that I don't want to tell you, but… I mean, you wouldn't believe me." Dean smiled his thanks at the waitress who brought his beer.

"Oh no," Jody said, putting a hand on his arm before Dean could take a swig. "You're not getting out of telling us."

Sam nodded. "So where else did you stop in the time machine?"

"Fine." Dean pushed away his beer. "Pull out that laptop of yours." He spent a few minutes on searches before turning the laptop around to face Sam and Jody. "Here's where I went."

"Is that…" Jody shook her head. "That's you with Jimmy Page and Robert Plant. Oh my God, look how young they were. When was this?"

"It was 1976," Dean said. "Backstage at one of their concerts. The Doctor had this psychic paper thing – and we really have to get some of that – and it looked like a press pass. There were some people around us who were smoking. I wasn't really thinking about _what_ they were smoking, you know. I was there for the music."

"You went to a Led Zeppelin concert. I should've guessed," Sam said. "How was it?"

"It was probably the most awesome experience of my life."

"You're smiling," said Jody. "You should do that more often, you know."

"I'm gonna try," Dean promised.

 _A/N: Thanks to Silbrith for her usual beta magic. And thanks for reading my first official crossover!_


End file.
